Tuesday, April 12, 2011

We all know the Muppets as those lovable creatures, but they had a history before Sesame Street; a violent history. Between 1957 and 1961 Muppet creator Jim Henson produced commercials for Wilkins, a coffee company, featuring Muppets named Wilkins, looking like a malformed Kermit, and Wontkins, a deformed Telly monster.

In the commercials, Wilkins pitches Wilkins Coffee to Wontkins and then murders him. An interesting combo of Itchy & Scratchy meets Sesame Street.

Maybe you've seen this, maybe not. It has 4,575,657 views on YouTube, and is the funniest thing the Cry Baby has watched in a long time. Enjoy. "There is no other animal in the kingdom of all animals, as fearless as the crazyass Honey Badger. Nasty as hell, it eats practically whatever it wants. Randall is disgusted."

In a problem that is certainly unique to Japan, safes and wads of cash are washing up on shore, after the tsunami swept them away in March. Many elderly people in Japan keep their savings in cash at home. The Japanese even have a word for this: : "tansu yokin," or "wardrobe savings." It's estimated that the hoarding has taken $350 billion yen out of circulation.

In most places, if people found wads of cash they would consider it a gift from heaven. In Japan, people finding the cash and safes are turning the booty over to police, who are trying to find the rightful owners.

"At first we put all the safes in the station," said Noriyoshi Goto, head of the Ofunato Police Department's financial affairs department. "But then there were too many, so we had to move them."

"I spent my career trying to convince them to deposit their money in a bank," said Yasuo Kimura, a former bank employee. "They always thought it was safer to keep it at home."